


F is for Professor

by LycheeCannon



Series: Dimitri X Byleth OTP [5]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Cute, F/M, Fluff, Love Letters, No Spoilers, Pre-Time Skip, Puppy Love, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 16:36:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20100280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LycheeCannon/pseuds/LycheeCannon
Summary: Byleth finds a love letter in the training hall and tries her darndest to find its owner so she can help them confess their feelings to the object of their affections. She has some leads and it doesn't go well.Requests here: bbnoodles.tumblr.comTalk to me here: https://twitter.com/BbNoodles1





	F is for Professor

Byleth was personable, helpful—friendly even— to all. 

On her free Saturdays, she would walk amongst the bustling monastery looking for things to do—sometimes she would train with the other professors or her father. Sometimes she’d line a few fish down by the docks and dig into a nice dinner with Flayn in the other students. When she was feeling like she was due for some alone time, she’d head down to the greenhouse to tend to some plants in quiet contemplation. One days where things were slow, she’d sit with the gatekeeper for a few hours with a pack of playing cards and then spend some time going around the monastery looking for the newest litter of kittens to play with. 

Deliveries, collections, finding lost items, giving helpful tips and tricks to any and all passerbyers, Byleth was just happy to finally have people around her that needed her help for something other than killing.

She had even delivered a love letter from a graduating student to Rhea without question and stood seriously before the Archbishop of a continent, asking the woman to read the letter and give a response so she could bring it back to the student. So, when she told the student that the answer was no—she had actually gotten an answer, not saving him the details to spare his feelings.

With that in mind, it should have made the letter in her hand even easier to deal with given that she’d handled similar ones not once but multiple times before. 

It was a little scrap of parchment torn from the corner of a journal, folded meticulously and into a square, that she’d found in the dining hall, near the bookshelf one morning on her way to meet with her father for some light sparring. The folded seams were worn, whoever had written it had unfolded and refolded it multiple times and probably kept it in their pocket until it’d found its new home under the rolling ladder.

_F_—The rest was a little torn, so the name was not readable…

_I have come to fancy you and I know not how to inform you of my feelings, I find that when I am around you, I lose my sense of self and no longer know how to act. I want nothing more than to tell you how I feel but I worry that you will not accept my feelings or worse—will shun me because I know there is no possibility that you could feel anything for me. I disgust myself and I do not deserve someone such as yourself. You are the sun, and I do not deserve to stand in your glory._

_I feel so lost without being able to tell you how I feel._

_Sincerely,  
Your secret admirer_

Byleth had read the letter—instantly feeling such sympathy for the writer. How unfortunate for them that the object of their captivation did not know them at all. Even though she was often hailed as a rather stoic person, she grew up in a band of men with a father that was more often than not rough around the edges. Her education about love came not from trysts in barns with the neighbor boy—because there never was one around long enough, but rather from the sappy romance tales that Jeralt would bring home from the general store ever now and again in hopes of sparking some emotional development in his otherwise taciturn daughter. They could not afford much; books were a luxury. But sometimes they’d come on long pieces of parchment, clearly copied by some poor scribe. There were bound books occasionally, but they’d always trade them for the next story to keep the selection fresh for her.  
So, even though she’d never been kissed before, she knew from the stories that the heavens were supposed to align and the stars were supposed to suddenly be brighter the moment she was. 

_You’re pathetic._ Sothis chimed in her mind, _that’s the most foolish swill I have ever heard._

There weren’t that many people with F’s in their name at the monastery. A few soldiers here and there she was aware of—including Gatekeeper Frank. Then there were the students, Ferdinand, Flayn, and—!  
It was so obvious, being worried that they would not reciprocate or even worse, dislike the writer for their feelings, someone having no idea how to talk to that person, it was so clearly the unapproachable lone wolf, Felix.  
He was usually so aloof and eager to fight but not so much to chat, she could see why a passing maiden might find a man like him difficult to approach with the idea of courtship.

So, after lunch, she set out to find out who the writer was. After scanning through the essays turned in by all the Blue Lion girls, she could not find a close match. The writer used a navy-blue ink and wrote with curly, cursive script.

After dinner, she consulted with Manuela and Hanneman and to their complete bewilderment, asked to borrow all of their students’ papers as well.  
Again, no close match.

Byleth sighed from her roost in the dining hall, about 50 papers scattered in front of her. How was she ever going to figure out who the secret admirer was? Who was she to even be spending her valuable time on such a fruitless endeavor?

But it was a noble cause. And that meant it was worth it.

“You. Let’s spar, I’ve grown weary of the idiots down at the ring. They’re no challenge to me.” Speak of the devil…

Byleth turned and found Felix leaning gracelessly against the corner of the bench. A sword was strapped to his hip and his hair was loosely falling out of it’s perch on his head but he looked pretty immaculate otherwise. The folks down at the ring really had not made him break a sweat today. 

Felix grumbled a bit as she did not respond immediately, reaching down for a small stack of papers to sort through. Byleth’s heart stopped for a second as she noticed that the scrap was precariously lined with the corner of one of the pages on top—she’d been trying to figure out if there was at least a commonality in the type of parchment used if she could not match the handwriting and ink. 

His eyes scanned the little scrap as Byleth sank into her chair, trying to make herself seem as small as possible. He looked quizzically at her— “What is this?”

“Erm…you see, I’m helping a student muster the courage to confess her feelings. But I do not know who she is, so I am trying to find out.” Byleth reached over and tapped the F with a delicate index finger. All I know is that the man she has feelings for has a name that starts with an ‘F’…”

Felix scoffed loudly, setting the small stack and the note down and turned to leave, “That’s an E, moron.” Byleth glared at the scrap as he departed… Maybe it was an E? There was a small hint of a bottom line… no matter, she still needed to figure out who wrote it first.

As his figure crossed over the threshhold back in the direction of the training grounds, she felt like she’d been sitting for far too long and left the papers at her seat for a moment while she rose to get something to eat from the kitchen staff before they started clearing down for the night.

She was not gone long, but when she returned, a familiar blonde was standing at her spot, looking over her workplace. He was sweating a little with his hair askew and boots dusty-- it seemed like he had gone for a run before turning in for something to eat.

“Good evening, Dimitri!” Byleth chirped at him, clapping a hand on his shoulder that made him jump, “How are you this fine evening?” She glanced over at her workspace to make sure that none of the cleaning staff had moved any of her papers but realized with a heart sinking jolt that the note was missing! She immediately got onto the floor, hoping that it had fallen off the table but to no avail. It was gone—either disposed of by the cleaning staff or blown away because the doors were now wide open.

Byleth felt like such a fool.

“Oh no, Dimitri, did you happen to see a small piece of parchment on top of any of these stacks? I was in the middle of investigating something.” She felt like she’d just wasted her entire day—and honestly, she had.

The blond lord looked nervously at her and shook his head, his long bangs coming to sway in his eyes. “I did not see anything of the sort… Professor I came here to ask you about…” And he prattled on about his upcoming Paladin exams and slowly Byleth forgot all about looking for the note.

After some discussion around the best way to keep a horse in good condition without warranting too many trips to the farrier, Byleth and Dimitri went their separate ways for the evening.

Dimitri closed the door to his small dorm room and immediately groped around his desk for his journal, gasping aloud when he realized that a note he’d written, torn, meant to send, and then was too cowardly to deliver had fallen out at some point between classes. When Felix had casually asked him if he'd taken to being a scribe since Byleth found a love letter, his heart had almost evacuated his body.

He took the found note from his breast pocket and fitted it into the torn corner, the single letter of the recipient’s name reuniting with the rest of its letters.

_Byleth E. _

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short, cute little one shot. :) In my head, Byleth is pretty dumb about most social things. WHAT A GOOD BRO THO! Felix probably knows Dimitri's handwriting pretty well from being childhood friends with him and Byleth wasn't even considering the guys so she didn't connect the dots.
> 
> Byleth's full name canonically is Byleth Eisner-- and I totally misread it as Fisner up until my second playthrough, which is where the inspiration for this particular short comes from.


End file.
